Should the Party of No ever get the White House and Congress back into its sweaty paws, it fully intends to get rid of the sweeping banking reform and financial regulatory laws passed by Democrats, too.

Breath easy, Wall Street and banksters, you’ll always have a friend in the GOP.

Alas, Republicans being in control of only one house of Congress this year, they can fight only one battle at a time.

David Kolb

But last week’s GOP campaign to repeal Obamacare was bravely fought.

Futile as always, a stupendous waste of taxpayer time, money and resources for which the elephants bravely declined to issue any apology or regret, their symbolic repeal vote was classic hard-core, right-wing nuttery.

This week, the GOP and its minions are gearing up once more for another noble crusade.

They mean to stop their nefarious enemy, the president, from perpetrating another of his madcap socialist schemes, this being Obama’s move to strip the GOP’s beloved Bush-era tax cuts which benefit mostly millionaires and billionaires, who are the natural GOP constituency.

Yes, this president is heartless.

Not only does he want to end the tax cuts for the richest of the rich, Socialist Obama wants to keep tax cuts in place for middle-class Americans.

Thank goodness Republicans are on the job to prevent this, even if it might further upset our delicate economic recovery, which actually is of little concern to the tea party-dominated Party of Romney.

This is their plan and they’re sticking to it.

Republicans are stretched to their limits fighting off Kenyan-inspired socialism, communism, progressivism, liberalism and common sense.

And as a result, there just hasn’t been enough time for the GOP big shots to kill those horrible banking reform laws passed by Democrats two summers ago.

Repealing the most sweeping financial regulation and reform bill enacted since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, is extremely high up on the GOP “honey do” list, and who could blame them.

Look what Democrats did with that crazy bill!

• A Financial Stability Oversight Council is now identifying risky practices that may be threatening the economy.

• A Consumer Finance Protection Bureau was set up under the umbrella of the Federal Reserve to police the individual market for loans and other financial products.

• An Office of Thrift Supervision was given expanded power to oversee banks.

• A Federal Insurance Office is now monitoring the insurance industry and will step in if it believes state regulators are dropping the ball.

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the derivatives market, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal government's beat cop on Wall Street, have been given expanded regulatory roles.

• Banking regulation has been streamlined, which previously had been a mishmash of unaccountability.

• The Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation, the trusted agency that protects our money in our banks now regulates state banks and thrifts of all sizes and bank holding companies of state banks with assets below $50 billion.

• The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under the Treasury Department now regulates national banks and federal thrifts of all sizes and the holding companies of national banks and federal thrifts with assets below $50 billion.

• The Federal Reserve now regulates bank and thrift holding companies with assets of more than $50 billion, and assume a pro-active responsibility for finding risk throughout the system and report semi-annually to Congress.

Fortunately, Republicans in Congress were able to help their friends on Wall Street and in the banking industry by preventing the adoption of the most restrictive regulatory changes sought by the president’s party, particularly the so-called “Volcker Rule” to restrict banks from making certain speculative investments that don’t benefit their customers.

Why, if they hadn’t succeeded in watering down the Democratic reform bills, we might not have had the recent spate of scandals involving the banking industry, with renewed episodes of greed and corruption that include:

• The concealment of money-laundering practices by banks.

• Risky credit-derivatives trading that has cost billions in losses.

• Marketing of dubious mortgage-backed securities.

• Improper home foreclosures.

Even apologists such as the Bloomberg financial empire, are arguing for a renewed crackdown:

“Unscrupulous behavior during and after the financial crisis, including the marketing of dubious mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting investors and improper home foreclosures, is almost too voluminous to list. In each case, bankers put profits ahead of probity while regulators either ignored or failed to spot red flags. For the sake of the financial industry - not to mention the millions of people who work in it and the extent to which robust economies depend on it - banks and regulators will need finally to take some meaningful steps toward reform. If they don’t, what little confidence remains in the system will evaporate.”

Don’t worry, Wall Street, Republicans are on the job.

They voted, almost to a member, to kill the financial reforms Democrats ultimately enacted.

They filibustered the House bill, which passed, but was rescued by a last-minute Democratic victory in the West Virginia Senate race, which saved banking reform.

They refused to install Elizabeth Warren as the president’s choice to oversee Wall Street and banking industry excesses and greed. Warren is now running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.

Republicans have declared they will repeal the banking reform laws if they win the White House.

Like a faithful dog, the Grand Old Party, the faithful old party, never gives up its fight to coddle fraud, corruption and greed, wherever it rears its ugly head.

I like dogs. But I don’t like this one.

David Kolb is former editorial page editor of The Muskegon Chronicle. Email: writersgroupllc@gmail.com